Black British Music Video

Since the early 2000s, creatives in UK grime music and attendant genres have voiced and displayed dissent toward neoliberal politics and violent inner-city planning through the medium of music video. Julian Wacker shows that music videos produced for artists such as Dizzee Rascal, Jorja Smith, Kano, Kojey Radical, and Scarlxrd reframe politically disenfranchised and culturally stigmatized council estates as unruly and malleable spaces on the move, ultimately disrupting exclusionary patterns stratified across the neoliberal city. Reading these music videos also provides insights into how they intervene in stereotyping narratives surrounding Black British -urban- culture in the UK.

Julian Wacker is a scholar in anglophone literary and cultural studies with a distinct focus on Black British cultural production at Universität Münster. He works as a teacher in secondary education.